Chapter 2
Fury didn’t even begin to describe what Major Crimes Detective Dominic Acardi felt right now. This was utter bullshit.
Rage boiled just below the surface.
The primal rage that only someone could feel when those he loved, were closest to him, had been hurt. It took everything he had to battle it back and do his fucking job.
Dom still didn’t have a full picture of what had happened tonight. But answers he had been seeking for years could be just moments from his hands. He would never take that lightly. Tonight had been a direct attack on Major Crimes. To prove a point.
Well, Dom and the rest of Major Crimes had learned something tonight.
This wasn’t finished.
And Madison—she could have been killed tonight. Because of what answers might be waiting on him in there now. That was all the incentive Dom needed.
That was what lit the fury beneath him now.
That woman was his. And those sons-of-bitches had almost killed her tonight. Had attacked her. Because of her relationship with him.
No.
Fury didn’t even begin to describe how he was feeling right now.
Murderous rage was closer to the truth.
There were very few people he would kill for in this world. That woman was at the damned top of the list. Only what thin veneer of civilization he still possessed kept him from ripping apart the first asshole he could find who had anything to do with this.
No one messed with Madison. No one.
Had Kimball not shot that bastard Costovia, Madison would have been raped and killed. So no, fury didn’t even begin to describe what was burning through Dom right now.
Detective Sol Kimball’s home sat on a street of middle-class, older bungalows, in the northwest corner of Finley Creek. It was shabby, the yard almost to his knees. Kimball hadn’t cut it in a long time, that was obvious. The house was red-brick and faded.
Sad.
It was sad. The man’s entire life had become that way.
Now Kimball was in surgery at Finley Creek to remove the bullets he’d taken tonight.
Some of those rounds might have even come from Dom’s own weapon.
He’d already turned over his main service weapon to forensics to follow procedure.
He carried his backup now. In most instances of a shooting, he’d have to stay right where he was through all the protocols.
But tonight—what had happened wasn’t finished yet. And they needed answers.
Someone from Major Crimes had to be sent here tonight. Dom had been top of the list.
Whether Kimball would be capable of ever standing trial for what he had done, or been a part of, or even be able to answer basic questions, was heavily in doubt.
Why? There was only one answer.
Greed. Because the money made from that drug that was out there everywhere was more important than the people it hurt.
If Kimball hadn’t grown a damned conscience at the last minute, more people would have been killed not even two hours earlier.
Including Madison. Madiso
n had almost been killed because of her association with the TSP. For the third time.
Dom would never forget. Nor forgive.
Those bastards—Kimball and Wilson, included—were on borrowed time, now. Costovia and Bell were dead. Kimball had named them as shooters involved with the choir hall ambush where Madison and three of her friends had nearly been killed. They had most of the shooters now.
Just one remained out there. Dom had been looking for those bastards for a very long time. Dom hunted. Searching Kimball’s home was only the first step.
Dom took it. He stepped into the kitchen. Looked around at where the man had lived. Saw nothing to impress.
The house smelled like stale cigarettes and empty beer bottles and a scorched microwave dinner.
Dom smelled and saw all three the instant he stepped inside.
There was a table in the center. It had warped pressboard.
There were animal gnaw marks on the legs.
There had been a dog there at one time, he suspected. The linoleum was worn, dirty.
Sol Kimball wasn’t much of a housekeeper. No surprise there—he hadn’t been much of a cop, either.
There was a photo album open on that table. With beer bottles next to it.
Dom stepped closer. He had gloves. He slipped them on. To preserve evidence. He knew how to play the scientist game. If he didn’t, the ladies-of-the-lab, the ones who ruled forensics, would eat him alive. Those women had real fangs when it came to their precious evidence.
Dom loved those women down there. Every last one of them was special. At least…the ones he interacted with the most. Haldyn, Bailey, Daryn, Madison, Charlotte.
And now Dr. Hope Coleson. Hope had replaced Dom’s pal Charlie’s wife when Rory had quit to have those twin babies of Charlie’s back in January.
The ladies-of-the-lab were Major Crimes’s ladies.
The boys of Major Crimes protected the ladies-of-the-lab. It was just the way it was.
Now one of them was on a table right now. Fighting to survive.
Little Dr. Hazel Hope Coleson, twenty-four years old, five-six, and all of one hundred pounds of pure hyper energy, had taken a bullet to the chest tonight. As victim of a war she had no part in. She was practically still a kid.
Dom would never take that sitting down.
Sol Kimball had been the man to fire that weapon. Dom stepped up to the table. There was a photo album there.
He turned the first page, trying to figure out just who Detective Sol Kimball really was. And why he had thought it was okay to run drugs into their county, why it was okay to target four innocent women in a damned mass shooting, and why what he had done to Hope and Haldyn was okay.
It would never be okay.
Madison had almost died.
Haldyn Harris and Hope Coleson were both in surgery now. It didn’t look good—especially for Hope.
At twenty-four years old. She had her entire life ahead of her, that girl, and now…
Sol Kimball’s face stared up at him from the first set of photos. Kimball, his wife—a reasonably attractive woman who could have done better—and a young girl. A girl who’d died because of that damned Opal Joy, a designer drug the TSP was fighting with everything they had to destroy.
That girl had been Kimball’s world.
Until she’d died, from the very drug Kimball had trafficked into the county.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on Dom. Not for a moment. Hell, that girl had deserved so much better than that.
He kept flipping the pages.
“Acardi, you might want to see this—” A female voice called out from the back of the small bungalow. Lila Dodson, a beautiful brunette with a quiet personality and razor-sharp mind, came to the end of the hallway. “Back bedroom.”
Dom nodded. He stepped away from the table, leaving the photo album behind without a backward glance. It would be looked at later. Everything would. But that girl was dead. Time to find the answers for the living was now.
He stepped into a room painted in a mix of garish watermelon green and bubblegum pink. There was a functional cheap white twin bed frame and mattress shoved to one corner.
“Above the bed.”
Dom swore, as he looked at what she meant.
A framed poster dominated the wall. The wall that was covered with what he thought were skateboarding stickers and logos. Everywhere. They wouldn’t come off without redoing the entire wall.
But it was the subject of the poster that drew his attention most.
“Are we sure her involvement tonight was just coincidence?”
Hope Coleson’s face stared back at him from that poster now. That wicked, adorable grin was unmistakable. He’d heard through the grapevine she’d been a skateboarding star when she’d been younger. Now he believed it.
“Witnesses said…he mentioned Hope’s younger days. And his daughter. I guess she was a big fan. Poor kid. How old was Kimball’s girl when she died?”
“Eighteen, I think. OD on that damned OPJ.”
“It was this that caught my attention first. I wanted you to see it—before we let just anyone in here.” Lila pointed to the yellow sticky note in the middle of the poster. Stuck right to the graphic on the T-shirt Hope wore in the poster. Hell, she looked young. Just a kid then.
In the middle of that sticky note were two sentences. Give the poster to Heather. And That was the best weekend of my daughter’s life—tell Hope thank you.
Thank you? How about they tell her the man was sorry?
Kimball’s bullet had struck Hope too damned close to her heart. No one would ever forget that. Dom had heard rumors she’d had a heart attack on the table. No one knew if she’d survive.
“I’ve already photographed it. But…considering…
I don’t trust anyone else out there tonight.
What do you want to do with it? If it didn’t mention Heather by name…
Are we sure Hope was just coincidence that Wilson took advantage of?
Or was it targeted?” Lila asked. The two of them worked together quite a bit now.
He liked her, she was good at what she did, and calm.
Nothing rattled Lila. He’d had far worse partners before.
“You think Heather or Hope pissed someone off in Wichita Falls and that’s why Wilson attacked tonight? Not to strike at Major Crimes, but to shut up anything one of them might have found?”
“I can see either theory working,” Lila said, softly. “Who was supposed to be out there tonight?”
“Second shift.”
“And that would have been Hope. Not Haldyn and Madison. Except that flu bug…”
Dom nodded. “Either way. But Hope was supposed to be lab-bound, because of her broken arm. She only went along with Madison to drive. Otherwise Madison would have been alone. You’ve photographed? Documented?” He looked at her. Knew what he was about to do could get him into some serious shit later.
She nodded. He pulled the sticky note down, slipped it into an evidence bag—Madison had trained him well, after all—and hid it in his pocket. For now.
He’d turn it over to his direct superior when he could. They had a shadow investigation now. It had been going on for months. There were a lot of things kept hidden at the TSP now.
And the governor knew all about it.
Dom looked at Lila. “Should we do as the note said? Give this thing to Heather?”
She hesitated. She was a rule-follower, this woman.
Not as much as Heather Coleson, lieutenant, who came straight from the Wichita Falls IA division—but far more than Dom and the rest of his pals.
He suspected Lila and Heather had been transferred into Major Crimes to help keep Dom and the boys in line.
Heather—Hope’s older sister. Dom’s teammate for the past two months or so.
“It’s a little weird that this is here, like…
was he planning something tonight? I don’t know if he was, or if…
this was all just random. I do think we should at least take it back to the TSP.
Or see that it gets there. The forensics techs assigned to Kimball’s house are here.
Tiff and Tom. They were called in early.
For this. Every tech is showing up at the building now, if they can. ”
Of course they were. Haldyn was well-liked. So were Madison and Hope. Their own people had been attacked. No one would ever take that lightly.
Dom reached up. The poster frame was one of those cheap twenty-dollar plastic things sold at big box stores. There were skateboarding kitten stickers in the corners. Holding the plastic edging in place. Kitten stickers. Pink and purple.
Hell. Kimball’s daughter had been just a kid. Just an innocent kid. He lifted the poster off the hook.
“Acardi…” Lila said his name quietly. Sharply. Dom looked to where she pointed.
The bottom rail edging was sliding.
Because there was something behind it.